NARROW GAUGE RAILWAYS IN THE MALVERN HILLS

M. CHRISTENSEN

Note: this article originally appeared in
RECORD 66 and is reproduced here by permission of the Industrial
Railway Society. The article was published in 1976 and it should be
noted that references to the current situation refer to the date the
article was published, and not necessarily to the present day. For up
to date information follow the links in the article to articles on
each quarry.

My interest in the narrow gauge railways of this
area really started as a result of two short references  anote
about a quarry line at Colwall in the Societys Bulletin
No.144, and a paragraph about Beringtons Quarry at Little
Malvern in RECORD 20, page 279. There seemed to be scope for some
further investigation and, having friends in Colwall, I did not need
much pushing! These notes do not pretend to be a complete history and
to some extent are based on the memories of people who have lived and
worked on the Malverns for a long time.

As the Ranger to the Malvern Hills Conservators*
once remarked, almost everyone who owned a shovel has had a go at
quarrying on the Malverns at some time. Consequently, there are a
great many small stone pits but I am concerned here only with the
larger ones in which the transport of stone became a problem. Over
the years some of the larger quarries have changed hands often,
because the size of operations is strictly controlled by the ever
watchful Conservators. The Pyx Granite Co Ltd, for example, first
started working the quarry at Little Malvern, known as
Beringtons. In 1909 when that quarry was nearing exhaustion,
the Scar Quarry to the north was taken over. When this became
unworkable because of the increase in size of the adjacent North
Quarry, which was at a lower level, the Pyx Company was compelled to
move its operations once again and started working a high level
quarry above the Tank Quarry, which had been worked for many years by
Mr T. Morgan. Similarly, when the quarry nearest the road cutting at
The Wyche became life expired its owner opened a new quarry a few
hundred yards to the north and slightly lower down the hill.

Ballard’s Malt Vinegar Works

Grid Reference: SO 755426

The vinegar works was built in 1894, and is
reputed to have been the first one in the Midlands. When the malting
barley had served its purpose, the dross was taken in wagons down a
2ft gauge line to a piggery. The railway was also used to take muck
away from the piggery, and the track was extended past the piggery on
to a tip. The motive power is uncertain. Some say that man-power was
all that was used. There is, however, a noticeable rise towards the
vinegar works which lends support to the story that a capstan was
used. When the works stopped making vinegar the lower portion of the
line was retained to help with muck removal, and remains so today.
Another short length of 2ft gauge rail remains embedded in the road
outside the vinegar works. The wagon at present in use on the line
(herewith reproduced) is not an original item of rolling stock. It is
of Hudson manufacture and came from an unknown waterworks. Little is
known of the original wagons, but there survives one pair of wheels
which came from an example with inside axle bearings. The diameter of
these wheels is a mere six inches.

The one item of rolling stock on the surviving
length of Ballards malt vinegar works system, with the piggery
of the right. July 1974. (M.Christensen)

Belmont Brickworks

Grid Reference: SO 771477

Belmont Brickworks was owned by Mr J.C. Wilson in
the early years of this century. The workings were of some size and
by 1897 they employed five men under cover and thirty outside. Due to
the rapidly enlarging pit workings the lower incline out of the
deeper pit had been swept away by 1905. The works was remodelled in
1910 and its output can be gauged from Mr Frank Holl’s
recollection that when he was a road engine driver he would take out
6,000 bricks a day to one site alone. To move this tonnage two
engines would be 'doubled up' for the stiff climb up through West Malvern.

Grid Reference: SO 767447

It has proved difficult to establish many precise
dates in connection with this system  also known as the West of
England Quarries  mainly because animosity between the quarry
owners and the landscape preservationists over the years has resulted
in many of the original documents being destroyed. The schematic map
shows what I have been able to determine from available information.
The line descended an incline from the quarry until it reached the
road near to the Royal Wells Brewery. It is relatively easy to trace
the lower part of this incline but the upper part was obliterated
when the Conservators landscaped the quarries in recent years. There
is, in the Conservators records, a photograph of this incline
which shows it to have been a three-rail arrangement working on the
self-acting principle with one winding drum above the rails at the
summit. Near the brewery the line turned sharply to cross the road
and immediately descended through Park Wood to the foot of the hills.
The earthworks can be clearly discerned amongst the trees.
A plan forming part of a family deed
dated November 1909 clearly shows two incline drums on this section
 one at the summit and one halfway down. The lower of these two
drums was situated at a bend in the run which can be seen in the
woods, and the location of the upper one is easily found because the
owner of the house 'Monellan' has built his garage on its
foundations. At the foot of the incline the line turned sharply to
the left and ran alongside the Brockhill Road, newly built in the
1890s. The line did not, however, run all the way to Colwall
Station. The quarry owners were restricted to building their line
entirely on land leased from the Barton Court Estate and had no
authority to cross the public highway. Consequently the railway
stopped some hundreds of yards short of the public road from The
Wyche down to Colwall village. Here, near a pond, there was a wooden
derrick by means of which the wagons were lifted and their contents
tipped into road trailers. The trailers were then towed a short
distance to a tipping chute in the yard of Colwall Station, just
behind the Schweppes factory. The chute is still to be seen today.
Just why the stone was not brought by road all the way from the
quarries is uncertain, but the steep and sharply curved hill down
into Colwall probably made road haulage throughout too hazardous.

It is not certain just when the line was built.
An editorial comment in the Malvern Gazette of 24th May 1907
indicated that at that time the quarry was only just being
redeveloped by Mr F. Pottinger and the railway had not been built.
However, it was laid down before November 1909, and earIy in 1910
Pottinger floated the Colwall Park Granite Co Ltd to take over his
quarries at Colwall and nearby Mathon. Later that year the quarry
owners had a disagreement with the Conservators about their line
which crossed the Purlieu, a lane over which the Conservators claimed
rights of stewardship. On 5th September 1910 the Ranger of the
Conservators served notice on the Company to remove that part of the
tramway which crossed the Purlieu. Although the Company disputed the
Conservators rights of jurisdiction, they compromised on 10th
September by agreeing to make an annual payment of £2 for way leave.

Details of the rolling stock are hard to come by.
The fact that the wagons were tipped bodily implies that they were
not V-skips and early photographs of the quarry show wooden bodied
wagons. It is probable that V-skips were used within the quarry,
possibly even down the incline (to
serve the lime burning kilns  TJL),
and this practice continued after the
rest of the system was abandoned. The body of a V-skip remains
amongst the waste tips which have been landscaped. There was a
locomotive to work the comparatively short length of the tramway from
the foot of the hill to the pond, for Mr Harry Pedlingham can
remember that when he was about ten years old there was an accident
involving a locomotive at the incline foot in which a mans leg
was severed. However, I have been unable to find any positive proof
of the identity of this locomotive. Even the gauge of the line is in
doubt, and whilst 2ft gauge track may have been used for the internal
system within the quarry it does not appear to have been the gauge of
the 'main line'. A surviving photograph shows the gauge to have been
wider, and nearer 3ft gauge than 2ft.

According to the note in Bulletin No.144,
the line which ran alongside Brockhill Road was lifted before World
War 1, and road haulage with traction engines substituted. The demise
of the incline down from the quarry appears to have been early.
Perhaps road transport throughout was found to be practicable after
all. One of the principal causes for the closure of the inclines was
the extension of the Purlieu Quarry, which cut through the route of
the lower incline just below the winding drum. At some time after the
lower incline fell into disuse another incline was opened from a
small quarry located at the head of the Purlieu Quarry. This new
route crossed the path of the old incline in a cutting some ten feet
below the older level and apparently led out on to the Brockhill Road
as before. At a later date still, this incline was cut by another
route which ran from yet another small quarry on to the top of some
lime kilns**. The kilns were made of massed concrete, as were the
chutes in the yard and the bases for the machines in the quarry.
Details of the closure of the quarries are given later under Wyche Quarry.

Grid Reference: SO 761369

Hollybush Quarry, located at the extreme southern
end of the Malverns, is still producing a limited amount of stone
today. The quarry consists of two distinct pits at different levels,
and there was once an incline to bring stone down from the higher
level. A steep roadway now performs this task, and its construction
has destroyed the upper part of the incline earthworks. Traces of the
lower part of the incline survive, as does the body of a 2ft gauge
V-skip, possibly of Hudson manufacture.

Grid Reference: SO 772412

This quarry, known locally as Berington’s,
was situated high above the road at Little Malvern. It was opened
about 1880 but remained a small concern until about 1908 when it
passed into the hands of the Pyx Granite Co Ltd. When the railway was
laid is uncertain, but it possessed a substantial self-acting
incline. The tracks passed on either side of the winding drum, the
base of which, some 6ft square, remains today. The lines then joined
to make a three rail section and passed through a narrow cutting,
after which they separated to form a conventional two track incline.
At the foot of the incline the rails curved very sharply past a stone
retaining wall, built at a radius of about 9ft. Curving through
180° past the crushing plant, the line emerged facing the
opposite direction and several feet above the road. There were three
wooden chutes (later replaced by two steel ones) for discharging the
stone into road vehicles below. The chutes were not directly over the
road, but rather over a lay-by alongside the road, and the road
engines often had problems in manoeuvring the trailers into position.
According to the notes on page 279 of RECORD 20, the lower section of
line from the crushing plant to the chutes and waste tips was hand worked.

Most of the stone was taken by traction engines
to the GWR station yard at Malvern Wells. At one time the Pyx Granite
Co Ltd had one Robey and two Burrell engines here, plus two Burrells
at Scar Quarry. One of the Scar engines came down to Berington’s
one day and had a collision with a motor car. The car was driven
away, but the Burrell sustained a broken axle! The engines were not
very popular with local residents who objected to the 'ploughing
competition' which began as soon as rain softened the road. The climb
up from the Wells Station across the Common was hard going, and at
least one driver was prosecuted for making excessive smoke. He
admitted that he was obliged to build up his fire before making the
climb, and it was inevitable that the engine would make smoke. At an
adjourned hearing, Mr Aveling gave evidence that the engine was 'the
most perfect' at consuming its own smoke . but then, it was an
Aveling engine. The driver lost his case. In 1929 the Pyx Company was
bought out by the Conservators solely for the purpose of closing down
the quarry.

Little Malvern Quarry, showing a road trailer below the steel chutes and also the incline heading down from he quarry. (Malvern Hills Conservators)

Grid Reference: SO 771441

The rail system here consisted of light track
using V-skips to carry stone from the quarry face to the screens,
from which it was directly loaded into road vehicles. The rail layout
naturally changed as the quarry grew in size, but in the early days
the layout was unusual in that one line ran round the foot of the
face and was connected to the screens by two radial lines (rather
like ribs on a ladys fan). The V-skips were of at least two
different types, one having the upper lip of the skip body reinforced
by channel section of quite heavy cross-section.

Grid Reference: SO 773468

Although there was a quarry here by 1905, Scar
Quarry does not feature in official quarry returns until 1907. Its
expansion was rapid, and in 1908 it employed 29 men. A length of 2ft
gauge jubilee type track still remains in the quarry, half buried by
a rock fall, the rail weight being approximately 15 lb per yard. As
elsewhere, the layout within the quarry varied as the face receded,
and I have not attempted to show it on the plan. The permanent system
consisted of a double track incline from the quarry down to the
crushers, located high above a dead-end road.

Grid Reference: SO 768470

The quarry was owned in its early years by Mr T.
Morgan, but it appears that the incline descended from a higher level
and it may not have commenced operations until the Pyx Granite Co Ltd
took over. The course of the lines in the quarry has been destroyed
by later working, and little information has been uncovered other
than that shown on maps of the area.

Grid Reference: SO 770439

This quarry is right alongside the road about one
hundred yards north of the cutting which carries the road through the
crest of the Malverns. Within the quarry there was a 2ft gauge system
upon which were employed hand-propelled V-skips. The skips were also
used to carry stone from the screens to road vehicles, with a spur
running on to a raised stage at right angles to the road. One
photograph shows stone being tipped into a road lorry from a V-skip
wagon which has a screw handbrake on a vertical shaft mounted on a
frame at one end. One of the original concerns of the Malvern
Conservators was that Wyche Quarry and Colwall Park Quarry might both
be worked to such an extent that they would eventually meet, thereby
causing a nasty gash in the famous outline of the Hills. The
Conservators succeeded in preventing this by purchasing the Wyche
Quarry first, and CoIwall Park Quarry later, and simply closing them.
In the case of the latter, however, the owners did not sell out to
the Conservators until the quarry was economically worked out anyway.

The Malvern Funicular Railway

I end these notes with a fascinating
'might-have-been'. In 1910 it was proposed that a passenger-carrying
funicular railway be built up the eastern slope of the Hills from
Malvern to the summit of Worcestershire Beacon, which is one of the
best viewpoints in the Hills. Those who wished to preserve the
natural beauty of the Hills were strongly opposed to the scheme, but
there were others who supported it as a valuable commercial
attraction. The Light Railway Commissioners met in Malvern on 18th
July 1910 and expressed favour for the scheme, but it all came to nothing.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the
assistance of Harry Pedlingham and Frank Holl, the Ranger and the
staff of the Conservators, plus staff at the Council Offices in
Malvern, the Malvern Library and the Records Office in Hereford.

Footnotes:

* The Malvern Hills Conservators, created by
Act of Parliament, are charged with preserving the natural amenities
of the Malvern Hills area. They started work about 1922, and their
first task was to try and stop quarrying activities in the Hills.
This was usually achieved by the simple expedient of buying each
quarry and then closing it down, because of the nature of their work,
the Conservators were not very popular. Many quarry workers and road
hauliers lost their jobs as a result of quarry closures, and even
today their unpopularity remains since they are responsible for
collecting fees for parked cars. It has to be admitted, however, that
the Conservators have expended a great deal of effort on landscaping
quarry tips to create level areas for car parking. (SEE also ADDENDUM below.)

** The rock on the
western side of the Malvern Hills is limestone and for many years
stone has been burnt hereabouts.

Maps:

The Malvern Industrial Archaeology
Circle has researched the quarries in the Malvern Hills and are able
to add to the information provided in this article. This research is
available at: more
on the Quarries in the Malvern Hills

ADDENDUM (Added by the MIAC, 2013)

The Malvern Hills Conservators are
an independent non-governmental statutory body working under the
Mills Hills Acts of Parliament of 1884, 1909, 1924 and 1930. They
maintain all the open hill and common land under their control using
funds levied on the local taxpayers and also revenue from other
sources such as car parking. All car park provided by the
Conservators are Pay and Display and one ticket is valid in all of
their car parks, See www.malvernhills.org.uk
for their web site.